The two-day India Today conclave kicked off from today at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, the capital of Maharashtra. The event, held ahead of the Maharashtra elections, began with a conversation with former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, who led the last Congress government in the state . Prithviraj Chavan said, We had predicted that Maha Vikas Aghadi would win 32 seats in the Lok Sabha elections and we won 31 seats.
He expressed confidence in victory in the assembly elections. Replying to a question whether the Congress will repeat the old mistake of overconfidence after emerging as the largest party in the Lok Sabha elections, Prithviraj Chavan said the formation of the Indian Alliance shows that the Congress is learning from its past mistakes, keep going.
On the ongoing disagreement in the MVA over the CM’s face, he said it is the tradition in Maharashtra that the largest party becomes the CM. Prithviraj Chavan appointed Uddhav Thackeray as chief minister in 2019 following the same formula. The Shiv Sena was the largest political party at that time. The former prime minister said the Congress leadership and Rahul Gandhi must take a decision in this regard. The opposition parties did not enter the electoral arena here by claiming to be the face of the CM.
Regarding the differences in the MVA, he said that we will campaign with a common manifesto and a common electoral strategy and we will definitely win. On the issue of seat distribution, Chavan said the Congress’s strike rate in the last elections was very good. He also listed different districts from Marathwada to Vidarbha and said we had joined the alliance as junior partners but people changed the equation.
The former chief minister said that we emerged as the largest party in the Lok Sabha elections. Regarding the scheme to provide cash benefits to women, Prithviraj Chavan said, We have done this in Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka. We made this promise in Madhya Pradesh but Shivraj Singh Chouhan delivered on it. This is what Congress thinks. We welcome this plan and will pursue it if we come to power. He claimed that the Congress had won and said that even in the Lok Sabha elections, the people chose the MVA from both alliances.
